Karen MacInerney - Margie Peterson 01 - Mother's Day Out

by Karen MacInerney

  “The address was in Maxted’s appointment book. And the ISC files in Blake’s office.”

  “What does Maria Espinosa have to do with ISC?”

  “I don’t know,” I said. “But the address shows up in Maxted’s book on September 15. Five days later, he was dead.”

  Becky’s mouth was a thin line. “You don’t think the McEwans had something to do with it, do you?” She was quiet for a moment. “Or Blake?”

  “That’s what I’ve been asking myself. The only thing is, if Blake is involved, then why did McEwan sneak into his office to take the ISC files? Why not just ask him for them?”

  “Good point. But he signed in downstairs, didn’t he? So Blake could figure out who was in the office.”

  “Yeah, but lots of people come in on weekends. They’re attorneys, remember? Besides, who would suspect the principal partner of stealing?”

  “I see what you mean. What do you think is going on?”

  I gazed at the dark building. “Something tells me the answer is in there. The problem is, I don’t know how to get in.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Blake hadn’t woken up yet when Prue stopped by to pick up the kids the next morning. She waltzed through the door, resplendent in a peach twin set that I was betting would be covered in peanut butter before noon.

  “What happened to Blake’s car?” she asked.

  “It blew up,” Elsie answered helpfully.

  “Blew up?”

  “Oh, a short in the wiring.” I reminded myself to ask Blake later if the fire marshal had come up with any more information on the pipe bomb. “The insurance will take care of it. Blake is renting a car in the meantime.”

  She glanced out the window at the blackened metal, which sat next to my still-crunched minivan. “Not having much luck with cars lately, are you?”

  “My mommy is a vestigator now,” Elsie said proudly.

  Prue’s tweezed eyebrows shot up. “A what?”

  “A vestigator. She follows people around.”

  “Follows people… Margie, what on earth is she talking about?”

  My face turned scarlet. “It’s a little part-time thing,” I mumbled.

  Comprehension dawned on my mother-in-law’s powdered face. “You’re a private investigator?”

  I nodded.

  She raised a manicured hand to her forehead. “Dear God.” For a moment, I thought she was going to pass out in my front hall. You’d think I’d admitted to selling children on the black market, or performing human sacrifices and baying at the full moon. Then she opened her eyes. “What does Blake think?”

  “Well, I don’t think he’s crazy about it…”

  “I can see why.” Her voice was waspish. “No wonder you’re having problems.”

  I blinked at her. “Problems?”

  “Margie, I know that staying home can be… challenging sometimes. But a private investigating job… well, it’s dangerous, and just… just inappropriate.” She sighed and put a hand on my arm. “I’ll tell you what. Why don’t I call Bitsy. I’ll sponsor you, she’ll sponsor you, and we’ll get you involved in the League. It’ll keep you busy, although lord knows there’s enough that needs doing here…” She eyed the messy living room meaningfully.

  “I’ll think about it.”

  “A private investigator,” she murmured, shaking her coiffed head.

  “Thanks so much for taking the kids.” I said, trying to change the subject. “What do you have planned for the day?”

  “We’re going to go shopping,” she said, still looking pale. She leaned down to smooth Elsie’s wayward hair. “Won’t that be fun, sweetie?”

  “Can I get a new dress?” Elsie asked eagerly.

  “We’ll get a couple of new dresses. And maybe some new shoes.”

  “Oh, Prue, you don’t have to do that…”

  “I’ll have them back by five,” she said briskly. “We’ll talk more about this then.”

  I kissed the kids and watched them trail their grandma to her shiny new Camry, sure that Prudence would spend the rest of the day quizzing my children, looking for evidence of maternal neglect. When the Camry disappeared around the corner, I jotted a quick note to my husband, grabbed the Nordstrom bag, and headed to Becky’s.

  #

  “I thought this was supposed to come out black.” Becky and I stood at her mirror, staring at my formerly reddish-brown hair.

  “Well, it said Darkest Ebony on the label.” Becky picked up a lock of my wet hair and squinted at it. The she picked up a hairdryer and a brush. “Maybe it’ll look different when it dries.”

  Twenty minutes later, we stared into the mirror again.

  “The hairdryer just made it brighter.”

  “Hmmm. Well, I think it looks kind of stylish. I was reading the other day that Aubergine is all the rage in Paris.”

  “Aubergine?”

  “It’s French for eggplant.”

  “Eggplant! Becky,” I said, turning to face her. “My hair is purple. Purple! I have a funeral to attend in—” I glanced at my watch “—forty minutes, and my head looks like it just came back from a bad acid trip. I was going for incognito, remember? This is not going to help!”

  “Let me try one more rinse of color.”

  “There’s no time!”

  “I could always try shoe polish.”

  “No!” I stared at my bright purple hair.

  She pursed her lips. “I might have a hat you could borrow. Big, black, floppy—if we put it up in a bun and stick the hat on, it’ll cover it.”

  We gazed at my hair in the mirror, fascinated by its brilliance. “How long does it take this to wash out?”

  Becky squinted at the bottle. “About ten shampoos, it says.”

  I sighed. “Damn. I hope there’s enough time to get it out before Prue comes back with the kids.”

  “Oh, that’s right. How did it go this morning?”

  “Elsie spilled the beans about my new job.”

  Becky winced. “Oh, no.”

  “Oh, yes. I thought Prue was going to have a stroke in my living room.”

  “Your life just keeps getting better and better, doesn’t it?”

  I sighed. “Honestly? I don’t see how it could get any worse.”

  #

  I walked into Lakeside Baptist Church two minutes before the service was scheduled to start, clutching my floppy hat and ducking my head. The orange and green stained glass obviously dated from the seventies, and thirty years’ accumulation of must and lilies assaulted my nostrils as I snatched a program and hurried to one of the dark wooden pews.

  I scanned the backs of the heads in front of me. A woman in a black turban was three rows from the front, accompanied by a stooped, bald man. Willie and her husband. I stared hard at the backs of the rest of the heads, hoping I wouldn’t see Bunsen, but men are hard to recognize by the backs of their heads. A few women were smattered among the crowd, including a blonde in the front row. I found myself wondering if she or the other handful of other women were transvestites. Then again, this was a Baptist church, so maybe not.

  As the elderly organist began cranking out a wheezy dirge, I examined the program in my hands. My heart twinged at the photo of Evan Maxted on the front—smiling, young, full of life and hope.

  Nothing like the dead body in the ladies’ room at the Rainbow Room.

  I opened the program and blinked. The officiant was Rev. Ronald Maxted. Peaches had said Evan’s father was a preacher out west, and now I recognized the name.

  Ronald Maxted was a fundamentalist televangelist.

  For a moment I wondered why the memorial service was being held in a small church in Austin, instead of Maxted’s sprawling church compound in California. Then I remembered the circumstances of Evan Maxted’s death. Rev. Maxted probably wanted to avoid the publicity. After all, his son had been wearing a ball gown when he died, and he’d been found in the ladies’ room of a gay bar. That probably wouldn’t go over too well with his national audi
ence.

  The dirge died away, and the Rev. Ronald Maxted walked down the aisle, a woman I recognized as Evan’s mother clutching his arm in a tragic parody of a wedding procession. She wore an ill-cut black dress, and the bleakness in her tear-streaked face hit me like a blow. Tears sprang to my eyes as she stumbled to the front pew, helped to her seat by the blonde I had noticed earlier. As the younger woman put her arms around the grieving woman, it occurred to me she must be Evan’s sister. The woman who was to be married in October.

  While Mrs. Maxted was obviously falling to pieces, Rev. Maxted’s lips were set in a grim line. As he mounted the stair to the altar and turned to address the small congregation, I could understand why he had such a following. His high cheekbones and shock of dark hair gave him a boyish look, and I could see millions of lonely housewives swooning over this handsome man and his promises of salvation. Beside her husband’s good looks and charisma, Violet Maxted seemed small and washed out. An odd match.

  “Thank you all for coming to honor the life of my son, Evan Maxted.” A keening noise came from the front of the church, where Violet Maxted doubled over in her pew. “God giveth,” he said, his voice like warm chocolate despite the circumstances, “and God taketh away.”

  As he moved through the service, I found myself hypnotized by his voice, which was low, soothing, and bore an undercurrent of authority that was somehow comforting. Were it not for the shared last name, and the blown-up photo of Evan that stood in a place of honor by the altar, the cheekbones and dark eyes an eerie mirror image of the man speaking, I wouldn’t have known it was his son’s funeral Rev. Maxted was officiating.

  It wasn’t until he began the eulogy that a current of raw emotion pulsed through his voice. “Evan was a kind, good boy. His mother and I always taught him to walk in the light, in the way of the Lord.” He paused and looked down for a moment. “We are all sinners,” he said slowly, “each in our own way. Let us hope that our misdeeds, and those of my son—” his voice cracked “—will be washed clean in the next lifetime, and that we will all be spared the fires of hell.”

  The church was silent for a long moment, except for a choking sob from Evan’s mother. My heart tore for both of them, and I thought of my own precious babies, safe at home. How could the Maxteds bear to go on living when their child was dead? Life was so unfair.

  There was a long, painful moment. Then Rev. Maxted jerked his head toward the organist, and she cranked out another dirge. He stood at the front of the church, eyes closed, until the last strains died away. He looked up slowly. “Thank you all for coming to honor my son. May the Lord be with all of us, and lead us all in the paths of righteousness. Amen.”

  He stepped down to join his wife, and the service was over.

  As the people in the pews rose and moved toward the aisle, I pretended to search for something in my purse. The lecherous man from ISC walked by my pew, followed by the woman who had caught me in Evan’s office. I ducked my head and peeked out again just in time to see Willie hobble down the aisle on the arm of a stooped, liver-spotted man. I tried not to imagine his exploits with a Zambian princess and glanced instead at the rest of the group coming down the aisle. I was surprised to see Trevor among them, wearing a black turtleneck and black horn-rimmed glasses. His eyes slid to me, and I lowered my head again, focusing on the contents of my purse. When I looked up again a moment later, my heart stopped.

  A few steps behind Trevor was my husband.

  I buried my hands in my purse, hands shaking, trying to control my body. My husband had lied about his client meeting so that he could attend Evan Maxted’s funeral. Bile welled up in my throat. Did I know my husband at all?

  When the murmur of voices dissipated, I staggered to my feet and stumbled into the nave. I opened the heavy double doors to the outside just in time to see my husband’s rented Subaru pull onto Loop 360.

  Somehow I made it across the parking lot to the minivan. My fingers trembled as I slammed the door behind me and dialed Becky.

  “How’d it go?”

  “Blake was there,” I croaked.

  Becky sucked in her breath. “Oh, Margie…”

  All of the pain and anger—the betrayal—swamped me. I clutched the phone to my ear as a deep, heaving sob racked my body. The steering wheel was hot against my forehead, and tears coursed down my cheeks.

  “Margie… Where are you?”

  “I’m at the church,” I whispered, my mind reeling through all the lies: Maxted, the pay raise I never found out about, my husband’s face at the funeral. “I don’t know what Blake is mixed up in. I thought it might be me they were going after when they blew up the car. Now I just don’t know… I don’t know anything anymore.”

  “Ask him about it.”

  “No,” I said. “Not yet.” I took a shuddery breath and straightened in my seat. “There’s one more thing I need to do.”

  “Margie…”

  “I’ll call you later,” I said, and hung up.

  I gripped the steering wheel for a few minutes, ignoring the frantic ring of the phone. Then I wiped my tears away, reversed out of the parking spot with a jerk, and headed toward town.

  #

  The warehouse on Seventh Street looked even more dilapidated in the blazing afternoon sun than it had the night before. I circled the building and discovered a loading dock I had missed the night before. Then I drove a short way up a neighboring street and turned around, parking in front of a sagging bungalow whose yard was littered with dead cars. I put the minivan in park and stared at the building.

  Graffiti covered the peeling brown paint in places, and the rusted-out appliances adrift among the weeds gave the building a forlorn and dangerous air. The loading dock door was probably locked, but it wouldn’t hurt to check.

  I got out of the minivan and scuttled across the pitted street, my high-heeled shoe slipping on a slick of old oil. Then I trotted up to the loading dock door and yanked at the handle. It didn’t budge. I snuck around the corner of the building to the door Maria Espinosa had used last night. It, too, was locked.

  As I returned to the minivan in defeat, I remembered what Maria Espinosa had said last night. Two more deliveries were due. Was this their destination? A freight train rumbled by just ten feet from the building as I closed the van door behind me, the events of the past week a jumble in my head. Maxted, International Shipping Company, the McEwans, Maria Espinosa—everything intersected here. My eyes bored into weather-stained concrete. I was more convinced than ever that the answer to the puzzle of Maxted’s murder, and my husband’s lies, lay behind that rusty metal door.

  An hour passed, then two, and nothing happened. The air conditioning was on, and the gas gauge was dropping perilously low. I probably had another twenty minutes left. Maybe the delivery Maria was talking about was destined for the store, not this abandoned warehouse. I had just decided to wait another ten minutes and leave to confront my husband when a dirty white truck rolled down the street and backed up to the loading dock.

  I shrank down in my seat, peering out the window as the driver got out and rapped at the loading dock door. A moment later, it rolled open. I craned my neck to see inside, but glimpsed only a concrete wall.

  The driver fumbled with the back of the truck, and a moment later the white doors swung open. A few Hispanic-looking men in threadbare jeans emerged from the warehouse’s open door and helped pull out the loading ramp. Then they began unloading something that looked like long rolls of paper from the back of the truck.

  Paper? Why paper?

  I watched as they hauled dozens of rolls into the building, wishing I could figure out a way to slip inside while the door was open. When they finished, the older of the warehouse men pointed back toward the building. His two helpers disappeared inside, and he pulled the door down behind them before walking around to the front of the truck. A moment later, he and the driver lit two cigarettes and leaned against the driver’s door.

  My eyes darted to the loading dock door.
When he rolled it down, it hadn’t gone all the way. A foot-high gap remained at the bottom.

  I shoved my keys into my skirt’s tiny pocket and shoved the cell phone and the pepper spray Becky had given me into the waistband of my skirt. Then I slid out the door, closing it softly behind me, slipped off my shoes, and sprinted across the road toward the warehouse.

  As I darted past the appliances, a stab of pain lanced through my foot. I ignored it and hobbled around the truck. The sound of Spanish floated to me from the driver’s side, along with the smell of smoke. I crept to the open door and crouched down, peering under it. I could see the rolls of paper, but the men had gone. I dropped to my belly and scooted inside, losing a button of my new suit to the rough concrete lip.

  I scrambled to my feet and scanned the dim room, which was lit by a single bulb dangling from the ceiling. The paper rolls had been deposited in a corner next to a pair of big double doors. A whirring sound came from the other side of the doors, and something told me it wouldn’t be a good idea to go in that way. My eyes focused on a dark doorway near the other corner. I tiptoed over it. As I peered around the corner into a darkened hallway, a volley of Spanish sounded just outside. I whirled around to see two pairs of feet in the gap of the bottom of the loading dock door.

  I dashed through the door and ducked through the first doorway on the left just as the loading dock door rumbled open behind me.

  TWENTY-TWO

  The room around me was pitch black and oppressively hot. The air smelled like mildew, automotive oil, and something else—something rotten. I pressed myself against the wall and inched to the side as the door outside screeched shut again. A clicking noise that sounded ominously like a lock followed, and I held my breath, half expecting the voices to round the corner and flick on a light. Instead, the whirring sound grew louder, then faded along with the voices, and I thought I heard the snick of a door shutting. The big double doors, probably.

  I waited a few minutes, listening for any further sound, but heard nothing but the faint whirring in the background. I cursed myself for not thinking to bring my flashlight. It was safely tucked away in the glove compartment of the minivan, not fifty yards from where I stood.